Alibaba to Launch eSports Tournament

The eSports industry has grown massively over the past few years. In fact, the kind of activity going about in the industry has taken growth to a new peak. The industry should be thankful to the eSports culture that has spread wide, allowing gamers a platform that was never there before. Instead of being frowned at, gamers can now earn a badge of professionalism in what they are good at. They can grab opportunities in the form of tournaments that scale globally and offer up prize pools worth fighting for.

With large organizations stepping into the eSports scene, the platform has been taken higher. Another multinational, that understands the worth of the eSports industry, has decided to step in and invest into it. Alibaba has made a couple of announcements, suggesting to drop a rather hefty sum of investment into the eSports industry.

The Chinese Ecommerce website, Alibaba will be reviving one of the most popular eSports tournaments, the World Cyber Games (WCG). WCG started in 2000 and saw its last daylight in 2013, after that it went dormant.

Alibaba will be putting in $15 million into its newly formed eSports wing. It is a rather huge amount for an initial investment, but probably not a lot to the multibillion dollar company. With an investment that high, one would expect the revival of the games to be spectacular. As such, the tournament has been said to hold $5.5 million in prize money across games like CS:GO, Hearthstone, Dota 2, and StarCraft 2.

We would have expected League of Legends to be in there somewhere as well. But unfortunately there won’t be any League action in the WCG. Alibaba’s main competitor, Tencent, which is also a Chinese multinational, owns Riot.

In any case, we think the steps Alibaba is taking are quite big and will benefit the eSports industry in a big way. We would be thrilled to see the World Cyber Games happen again and all the top teams go head to head.